humourless mummy, cuddly feminist

Female bishops: Not just a matter of tweaking the job description

My memories of Sunday school are generally hazy, but here’s one that stands out: one bright autumn day in the early 1980s, our Sunday school teacher decided to ask us, the children, what we thought our church should be like. I don’t know why she did this. As you’d expect, it was greeted by complete and utter silence, at least until my brother, struck by decidedly non-divine inspiration, decided to raise his hand:

To be fair, I suspect he was thinking of the character Brother Lee Love, so this wasn’t completely out of context. Either way, this proposal was not well-received. Well, Church of England, more fool you. If only you’d listened you’d now be, if not more politically correct, at least more amusing and creative in your use of sexism.

Although raised a Christian, I am not religious (although it’s not for want of trying, given 1. my desire to appear virtuous and 2. my fear of my own mortality). I am nevertheless extremely disappointed by the General Synod’s failure to gain the two-thirds majority required to pass legislation allowing women to be consecrated as bishops. I don’t personally want to be a bishop, nor do I want to interfere with an individual’s right to think sexist thoughts, be they spiritually motivated or otherwise. I do however want institutions to treat people fairly and not to have get-out clauses when it comes to valuing women just as much as men. I realise all this sounds a bit worldly. That’s because it’s meant to.

Writing in the Telegraph, trainee chaplain Jemima Thackray frets that the campaign for women bishops was undermined by the use of worldly feminist arguments which “sounded too much like a contrived government initiative to get women into the boardroom” (urgh!):

But the fact is that bishops aren’t normal workplace bosses, they are meant to be servants. […] Perhaps the campaign for women bishops would have benefitted from swapping the feminist rhetoric for a similar recognition that the authority of being a bishop is not a right or a reward but in fact a responsibility to serve others and a space to exercise God-given gifts.

The problem with this, of course, is that for so many of us affected it’s a nonsense. It doesn’t matter what spin you put on it. It’s all very well to claim that being bishop “is not a right or a reward but in fact a responsibility to serve others” (perhaps one could employ an advertising agency to develop some suitably manipulative slogans based on this self-serving line). This isn’t an argument about job descriptions or indeed power. It’s about respect for fellow human beings, whether they are religious or not. The General Synod vote insults all women. This should not go unchallenged.

The Church of England claims money, power and influence yet retreats into squeamishness about “worldly” issues whenever its own prejudices are challenged. It’s a tremendously flexible means of circumventing the moral strictures by which the rest of us have to live. Voluntary aided C of E schools can prioritise places for children based on the religion of their parents or they can choose not to. It depends, not on the word of God, but on how they wish to shape the “culture” that surrounds them. Perhaps in some cases it’s better not to prioritise religion – too many places for devout Polish immigrants, not enough for “true” C of E types, regardless of whether they attend a church or not. The right to discriminate – defended, without irony, on the grounds that to remove it would constitute discrimination – makes it possible to do anything. Keep out the godless. Keep out the immigrants. Keep out the women. Do whatever you have to and claim to be adhering to what your faith demands when those you exclude beg to differ.

This is not humility or servitude. It’s passive aggression and manipulation and it needs to be confronted, even if silencing terms such as “militant secularism” are thrown back in the faces of those who dare to speak out. And to my brother, I am sorry. I am sorry that all those years ago I told on you and that Dad was cross because he didn’t want people at church to know we watched the Kenny Everett Show. You were the better person. I now long for a church with massive hands, stupid puns and Cleo Roccos. A church with sexism that identifies itself as such rather than hiding behind slippery, self-pitying lies.

3 thoughts on “Female bishops: Not just a matter of tweaking the job description”

So…if I understand Jemima Thackray’s point correctly, the campaign for women bishops used the wrong argument. Saying that women should be allowed to be bishops because that’s right and fair and just and non-discriminatory is a self-defeating argument?

Instead, the campaign should have applied some spin to the role of being a bishop, and made it a role that was more fit for women, i.e. being a servant? Then the General Synod presumably would have had an epiphany and said, “Oh, yes. Being a bishop is a bit like being a servant. How could we have been so blind? It’s totally perfect for women!”

Hmmm…

There goes that bloody feminist rhetoric, ruining everything for everybody all the time! :o/

As an ex-Presbyterian atheist Scot living in Catholic Ireland, the CoE is more of a sitcom premise for me than a Credible Religious Threat, but I’ve been following this with a mixture of amused punditry, and vexed incredulity.

There’s been a couple of particular lowlights, though. One was Susie Leaf, one of the Synod Laity Refuseniks, who on C4 News said (and this is as close to a direct quote as I can manage) “Biblically, man and women are created equal, but ultimately it has to be men that are the leaders.” That one of those “mystery of the Trinity” ideas of “equality” you have going on there?

Another was one of the Anglo-Cath mob, a (male, naturally) priest saying something to the effect of, “of course, it’s not so much that I have objection, but we have to think about unity with Rome.” That’s an odd thing to say, as ‘unity with Rome’ doesn’t exist, and ‘Rome’ doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time thinking about what’d promote it. On balance, this rather comes across as “we must placate the (proper) Catholics on every point, and they might be slightly nicer to us in the future than they’ve been lately.”

On the whole, I’m not sure whether it’s a tactical defeat for feminism — or what passes as such in CoE circles — or a strategic victory for secularism.